What educational research in the physics classroom is published in Spain? A critical review of the last decade for the case of secondary education

An explorative and descriptive study about educational research concerning physics teaching in secondary education, published in Spain during the last decade, is presented. When focusing on those studies oriented towards the analysis of some aspects of the teaching/learning processes within classroom, it is found that they constituted a minority in the frame of the consulted literature. It is also found that the number of studies on physics education authored by secondary teachers is relatively low. Likewise, an approach to physics teaching guided by disciplinary contents is predominant in these studies, which is not in tune with those approaches based on the development of competences. All this reveals a certain disconnection between research and practice in physics education.